


somewhere in the belly of the beast

by nuricurry



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 00:26:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19800907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuricurry/pseuds/nuricurry
Summary: Direct my footsteps according to your word;let no sin rule over me.~Psalm 119:133There’s a degree of disregard in Nea’s treatment of him, something that he doesn’t care much for at all, yet inexplicitly continues to put up with.





	somewhere in the belly of the beast

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gravy_tape](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gravy_tape/gifts).



He wonders if there is any prayer he could have offered that could have prevented this. He’s never been a religious man-- ironic, given his occupation, given the work that has encapsulated his existence-- but he finds himself wondering if perhaps God could have truly been willing to consider his salvation if he asked. 

Nea laughed when he caught him praying once, and he never bothered to do it again. 

Nea is another ironically unreligious man who speaks freely of God and His work. The difference with Nea seems to be that he doesn’t talk about God as some divine being, as an all-knowing omnipresence that should be revered and feared. He talks about God like one talks about a particularly difficult relative, an absent father, or perhaps an estranged uncle. To Nea, God is more a question of value rather than of existence. Nea never doubts that God exists; he just doesn’t seem to think that God is worthy of his attention. 

Only Nea could ever think of himself as superior to God. 

“It’s ridiculous,” Nea says as he washes his hands in the fountain of a church in Naples. Cross watches his hands because part of him wonders if the holy water would burn Nea, melt away the skin from his hands, and maybe he hopes it does. But, of course, nothing happens, and Nea just dries his hands on his coat. “Why do people assume that God spends all His time listening to them?”

“Because that’s better than admitting that no one gives a damn,” he bites back and crosses himself before the Virgin. Nea watches him with laughter in his eyes. 

“Pathetic,” he snickers. Cross doesn’t know if he’s talking about him, or humanity at large. More than likely it’s both. 

He’s told that Nea has a plan. But he’s never told what Nea’s plan is. 

There’s a degree of disregard in Nea’s treatment of him, something that he doesn’t care much for at all, yet inexplicitly continues to put up with. Nea was the one who approached him in the first place, he was the one who stepped into Cross’ life and informed him of his intentions to destroy the Noah. Cross wasn’t a religious man but he worked for some, and as an exorcist, he felt obligated to perform his job. Not religious, not especially hard-working either; he just didn’t like wasting his time, and Nea’s offer promised to put an end to that. 

Except Nea never told him a goddamn thing and he ended up wasting his time anyway, trying to get a straight answer from him. 

“I want to talk about Mana.” He actually doesn’t. But he feels like he has to, because if they don’t talk about it, then it’s this cloud hanging over them. If they don’t talk about Mana, then he’s never going to get Nea to give him answers about anything. 

True to form, however, Nea just smiles at him. His lips pull back from his teeth, and they flash, eerily white and oh-so-perfectly straight, stark against his dark skin. The expression can be called a smile in name only because there’s no actual mirth or warmth in Nea’s face or his eyes. They’re just dark, empty, endless pools that trap light. It’s more a threat than anything. “I don’t,” he quips easily as if that’s the end of it. And he probably thinks it is. Nea has never had to do anything he doesn’t want to, no one can push him to act in any way he doesn’t want. Maybe some of that is the Millenium Earl, but he suspects that most of it is just Nea being Nea. 

He bites down on the cigarette held in the corner of his mouth, grinding his teeth so hard the filter breaks and the acrid taste of tobacco fills his mouth. “We need to talk about him. I need to know how to deal with him, Nea.” 

The fake smile fades from Nea’s face as quickly as it appeared, replaced instead with nothing but cold, biting disdain. “You aren’t doing anything with Mana,” he corrects him, his voice as harsh as the sound of two stones grinding against each other, “I’m the one who will deal with him.” 

“Then what the fuck am I here for?” he demands, frustrated and beyond the point of even pretending patience. 

Nea just laughs. “You’re here to look after me.” 

He wishes that ‘looking after’ Nea didn’t apparently involve getting his ass tore open in the catacombs beneath a church because there was a lot of things wrong with that. 

Nea fucks him like he wants him to bleed. It’s probably because he does; Nea is strangely fascinated with blood, with injury and human fragility. He suspects that perhaps part of that is being Noah, who are different, who don’t break and tear the same way other people do. More than likely, there’s also the simple fact that it’s fucked up, and that Nea is also fucked up, and nothing is going to stop him from indulging in whatever carnal sin appealed to him that particular day. 

Nea bends him over and holds his head down when they fuck. There was probably quite a bit that could be said about that-- forced submission, a need for control, Nea’s ever self-indulgent selfishness-- but the reality is he doesn’t hate it. What he does hate is that he doesn’t fight back. He takes Nea’s fingers in his mouth when he shoves them inside, he gets on his knees and arches his back like a whore. Nea is the god of his own world and he wants Cross suppliant at his feet, and he gives it to him with barely a fight. Nea has torn canyons down his back, has left impressions of his teeth on his throat, his shoulders, his hands, and Cross has let him. They’ve destroyed pews and tombs and hostel beds, and if there is a God, Cross prays that He’s stopped watching. It’s bad enough he participates, it’s bad enough he encourages it; he doesn’t need God to be present as well, because so much of his life has been shaped by the possible existence of an all-knowing and powerful God. He just wants one thing for himself, one choice made that he alone is accountable for. 

Except he isn’t in control of anything when he’s with Nea, not even his own thoughts. 

It happened slowly, in slight changes over time. Bit by bit, Nea began changing his thinking, shifting his thoughts into someone else’s. 

Cross had grown up in the Order. He hadn’t had a choice; orphans who were taken in, deemed worthy, given Innocence, seldom did. His life had been little more than an extended Mass, with the prayers and the psalms and the requests for mercy. That was what had first pushed him away from the church when he would pray over and over again, and be told that the reason he wasn’t being answered was surely because his sin was too great. 

_What sin?_ he wanted to ask, but knew he would never receive an answer. His mortal existence alone was a sin. 

“You didn’t ask for this,” Nea’s voice is hot beside his ear, low and deep and slippery, slipping between the cracks of his resolve. “You didn’t ask for this, or this, or this.” His hands are hot wherever they touch, whether it be his hip, or his throat, or his cock, and there are church bells ringing in his head. “God didn’t ask for anyone to do this. Why does the Order think they know better than God?”

“For the same reason you do,” he says, which makes Nea laugh, but it’s too late, he’s already undone, and the seed is planted. His words are the forbidden fruit that cast Adam from the Garden of Eden, only Cross cannot blame Eve or Satan or Nea. 

When Nea finally tells him his plan, it’s because he knows that it is too late for him to turn back.

“Help me destroy everything,” he offers, as he laughs at Cross’ prayers. 

The only God he prays to now is Nea.


End file.
